


Fireside Chats

by Mary Reed (Mary_Reed)



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins, maybe 2 and Inquisition depending on how I feel
Genre: Despite my very gay desire to romance Leliana, F/M, I found myself feeling like Zevran was the best choice for my Warden, I love him SO MUCH y'all, My Warden was female elf raised in the Circle, WOW guess who's finally posting this after 3 years of writing it?, in case that wasn't clear in the story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-21
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-08-27 02:32:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16693768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mary_Reed/pseuds/Mary%20Reed
Summary: She waits two weeks before she tells him about the baby.They are 70 miles outside of what used to be Lothering (and what seems well on its way to becoming Lothering once again), wrapped around each other by a small campfire.“Zevran, I need to tell you something. Before I came to sleep the night before the battle with the Archdemon, I met with Morrigan. She told me she had a way to save both Alistair and I. A way to kill the Archdemon without sacrificing anyone.”





	Fireside Chats

She waits two weeks before she tells him about the baby. 

 

They are 70 miles outside of what used to be Lothering (and what seems well on its way to becoming Lothering once again), wrapped around each other by a small campfire. 

“Zevran, I need to tell you something.” Her voice is unusually small. He starts at the softness of it; the Antivan assassin is used to the self-assured commands of Evelyn of the Grey Wardens, declaring war and peace in equal measure. 

“Anything, my love.” His voice is low, lacking its usual flirtatious tone. 

“You were there, when we killed the Archdemon.”

“When  _ you _ killed it, my love.” He smiles softly at her, dark eyes gleaming. 

“Zevran, something…happened the night before. Something important. Something that I’m not sure…” She trails off, green eyes unfocused. 

“My darling, if you were with someone else, you know that it is okay with me. We are only mortal, after all.” His voice wavers a bit, betraying the doubt behind the statement, but he ignores it, and Evelyn doesn’t seem to notice. He is not used to feeling jealousy; he is used to inciting it. It coils in the pit of his stomach, hissing at the thought of Evelyn with someone else, touching the tattoos on her face, wrapping their arms around her slim frame… He grips her a bit tighter. 

“No, no that’s not it at all!” Evelyn is startled back into focus as the statement registers. “Zevran, you are the love of my life.” Her eyes are sharper now, locked onto his with a fierce intensity. “I will have no one else. Ever. I do not want them, and they will never compare. You are mine, as I am yours.” There is an edge to that last sentence, trepidation for his reaction underriding every syllable. 

“Forever, my love,” Zevran responds. The creature in his belly relaxes. 

“No, before I came to sleep the night before the battle with the Archdemon, I met with Morrigan.” Evelyn pauses, waiting for some kind of sign. Silence meets her statement; it means little to Zevran. She was an enigma from the start, approving of his penchant for bucking the system but never seeking his company. “She told me she had a way to save both Alistair and I. A way to kill the Archdemon without sacrificing anyone.”

“What do you mean, without sacrificing anyone?” Evelyn blushes, swears under her breath (an Antivan curse she has picked up from Zevran with a perfect accent). She kept this from him, she remembers now. 

“In order to kill an Archdemon, the Grey Warden who delivers the final blow must take into himself the demon’s essence, and with the creature… he must die.” 

“You walked into that battle knowing that you would die?” There is panic in Zevran’s voice, the volume rising with it. “You were going to kill yourself fighting this thing, and you did not think to tell me?” 

“What would you have me do, Zevran? Tell you that I was prepared to sacrifice myself? Explain that Alistair needed to be king, that every last Grey Warden was dead except for the two of us, and that the Blight needed to end? What would you have said to that?” Both elves are sitting up now, facing each other, the fire ignored.

“I would have tried to stop you,” he responds hotly. 

“And people would have  _ died _ !” The campfire flares twenty feet in the air, illuminating the entire valley with a terrible light for several terrifying seconds. Evelyn forces a breath, steadying herself, a pang of guilt striking her at the fear in Zevran’s face. “Hundreds of people. Thousands. I can’t have that blood on my hands, Zevran. What is one life, for a thousand?” She sounds tired now. 

“It is everything if it is yours.” 

He’s hurt, still coming down off the adrenaline from the yelling and the display of power from moments ago. “I know I could not have stopped you, but I wish you would have let me try.” Evelyn sighs in frustration, running a hand through her short brown hair. She chopped most of it off after the fight; it reminded her too much of how she had looked that night, when she’d asked Alistair for the impossible. She remembers staring at her reflection in a pond and tearing her knife from it’s sheath, slicing long tendrils of hair with only the light of the moon to guide her. She remembers the images flashing through her head that night, of the fallen, the warriors and children screaming the same desperate cries, their blood on her hands from her attempts to heal wounds she knew were fatal…

Zevran watches her eyes drift away again. They have the same haunted look they held when she woke, silent and sweating from nightmares she refused to speak of. The same look they held when he woke to Evelyn halfway through hacking off her silky hair, cuts on her hand from all the times the knife had slipped. “Evelyn…” he reaches for her hand, and she flinches away from the touch. 

“This isn’t even what I needed to tell you.” The frustration in her voice holds an edge of panic. Zevran starts to interject, but she cuts him off, barreling on with her story. “Morrigan came to me the night before, told me what a great friend I was. Told me she thought I was worthwhile. And then she told me of her way to kill the Archdemon and save us both. Alistair could be king, I could run away with you, and the Blight would end. It was a win-win.” She stops, sucking in a deep breath. 

“How?” Zevran asks into the silence. He is not sure he wants to know the answer, but he can see she needs to tell him. To say whatever it is out loud. 

“If she were to lie with a Grey Warden, and conceive a child during a ritual, then when I struck the killing blow, the essence of the Archdemon would fly to the child in her belly.”

“And then she would kill it?” asks Zevran, confused. 

“No. She asked that she be allowed to keep it. Zevran, I know that I should have said no, that I never should have asked that of Alistair, but he was looking for a way out, a way to die a martyr, and I know I would’ve stepped in to save him and I didn’t want to leave you all alone… What? What is that face you’re making?” Zevran’s face is… strange. His mouth hangs open in shock, his eyes wide. He is clearly thinking something through. Finally, as Evelyn is about to break down and ask again, Zevran speaks. 

 

“You asked Alistair, to sleep with Morrigan? Our Alistair?” There is silence for a beat, heavy, pregnant silence, freezing worry on Evelyn’s drawn face. 

 

Then, suddenly, Zevran bursts out laughing. 

“Why are you laughing? What about this is funny?” demands Evelyn, but a smile is tugging at the corner of her mouth, too. 

“You- asked- Alistair- to sleep with- Morrigan!” He is doubled over now, clutching his stomach as tears of laughter streak down his face. “I just cannot get the image…” His laughter becomes a full cackle at the thought, filling their hollow with its warm sound. 

“Is it really that funny?” she asks. She was always the solemn one, but the careful composure she holds so dear is cracking at the edges, and a giggle creeps into her voice. 

“He hates her  _ so much _ ,” says Zevran through his laughter. “It must have been so awkward! Oh Maker, did you have to watch?” He falls onto his back giggling at this image. 

“ _ No _ ,” she hisses back, “I did not have to watch.” She pauses, and Zevran waits for the but. 

“But I had to ask him without Morrigan. So she could… prepare.” 

“Oh, how did that go?” he asks, his breath coming in gasping hiccups now. 

“I mean, he thought I was kidding. And then he realized I wasn’t, and it got… awkward. I had to promise to wait nearby…” She giggles at this, because isn’t it absurd? She asked her best friend to sleep with his least favorite person, and she had to be within earshot. 

“Oh no, could you hear our precious Templar boy losing his virginity through the door? Did Morrigan take his flower gently?” Now they are both laughing, belly deep, at the situation. 

After several minutes of this, they finally calm. Her voice still colored with soft giggles, Evelyn looks at Zevran. “Are you truly not disappointed in me? Disgusted with me? Nothing?”

Zevran forces his face back into a serious expression. “My love. Nothing could make me disgusted with you. Not if you grow an extra head, or sprout horns, and certainly not because you made a deal to save as many lives as you could.” He takes her hands in his, eyes intent. “I would walk with you to the pits of every afterlife man or dwarf or elf has ever dreamed, and whatever decisions you made along that path could not force me astray.” 

“I do not deserve such blind devotion,” she scoffs. “Look at the choices I have made!” 

“My darling, you chose to save not only Alistair’s life should he have been quicker than you on the draw, but both your life and mine as well. For a life I live without you is not a life at all. You saved me, Evelyn.  _ Again _ .” He smiles softly then. “You are the only person on this earth who could ever deserve blind devotion.” 

At that Evelyn looks down at her hands, still wrapped in his. “I do not know what to say except this: so long as you will follow me, you will have a place at my side. And so long as you are by my side, I will protect you from all who wish to harm you.” She gently extricates her hands from Zevran’s and traces a symbol between them in the air. 

“What was that?” 

“A Dalish sign of devotion. It was the last thing I remember my mother doing before the Circle took me away. Years later, I asked every mage in the Circle what it meant until finally a visiting Dalish emissary explained it to me. It is a sign of everlasting love, a promise to protect and remain bonded in this life and beyond.”

Zevran remains silent for several moments, and Evelyn worries that even with the proposal and the travelling and the promise to follow her where she goes, she has perhaps gone too far in this. Her fears prove misguided, however, as Zevran finally leans in and asks, with an open expression:

 

“Will you teach it to me?”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Sooooo I started this literally 3 years ago and I'm trying to be better about posting content so here you go. Have my fluffy Zevran/fem!Surana trash that's so sweet it'll give you a damn cavity.


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